Self-reliance is the foundation for action at every level, in the crisis we face. It would be good to have a realistic, actionable plan and preparations for every contingency that we and our families may encounter. But as Will Rogers said, "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future." We can't anticipate all eventualities, or prepare perfectly for all or even most of them; but the better prepared we are, the more freedom of action we will have, to engage on behalf of our friends, our community, our state, and our nation even when things begin to unravel.
A Chinese sage – long before soul-destroying communism took over that ancient civilization – once said,
Readiness is everything. Resolution is indissolubly bound up with caution. If an individual is careful and keeps his wits about him, he need not become excited or alarmed. If he is watchful at all times, even before danger is present, he is armed when danger approaches and need not be afraid.
The superior man is on his guard against what is not yet in sight and on the alert for what is not yet within hearing; therefore he dwells in the midst of difficulties as though they did not exist.
We've touched on this favorite "prepper" topic before, but let's dig a little deeper into the notion of "bugging out." Specifically, let's consider why you might bug out; when; where you would be a-going; how long you'll be gone; and what physical, mental, emotional and moral capabilities you and your loved ones have, to shape your choices. These are questions you need to tackle before you go down the rabbit hole of how many alternative fire-starters you need, or how many cases of MREs you'll need to buy to stuff your pack with the menus you can stomach.
WHY?
A good place to start, in any form of planning or preparedness, is to assess the threats to your safety and security, and then consider your options for dealing with them. Which threats can be addressed by bugging out, as opposed to staying put and hardening up in place?
A good approach to threat assessment is to list, describe, and analyze the threats you think are credible. This is best done as a group brainstorming exercise, involving people you know and trust – but who do not all think like you or defer to your opinions. Each participant can propose additions to the list, and no matter how outlandish or unlikely they seem, accept them all at this point. Give each a name, and agree on a short definition or description that characterizes it and distinguishes it from other threats. This part usually has the effect of doubling or tripling the length of your list, because for instance, a 10-yard diameter meteorite is going to present a very different set of challenges than an asteroid 100 times bigger.
These threat scenarios can range from the apocalyptic (such as nuclear war, asteroid strike, alien Death Star, or Wyoming's favorite, the Yellowstone supervolcano eruption) through the merely catastrophic (i.e., an electromagnetic pulse, or national default and economic collapse), to events that are far more likely, but have lesser or briefer impacts (such as wildfires, severe storms, road closures, and vehicular accidents or breakdowns). Of course, the severity of an event is dependent on your perspective. Your own house burning down is a bit worse than if it's your neighbor's.
Next, for each threat, come to a group consensus on its likelihood – the probability that it will occur – on a scale of 1-10. If you live and work in a low-crime rural area like most of Wyoming, the likelihood of a violent carjacking is probably a 1, while on the south side of Chicago it's more likely a 6 or 7. These ratings are relative to one another, and subjective, and you can adjust them as you go along.
Go back down your list again and rate each threat for the severity of its consequences for you if it does occur, also on a 1-10 scale.
Now you can cull your list, dropping those threats that everyone agrees have either a vanishingly small probability of occurring, or consequences so severe that they would not be survivable. A planet-killing asteroid is off the chart for consequences, and abduction by space aliens has such a small probability of occurrence that both can probably be safely discarded. dropped from further analysis. Those of us who live within a few hundred miles of the Yellowstone caldera, for instance, generally either ignore it as vanishingly unlikely to be a problem in our lifetimes (off the bottom of the chart for probability), or prepare for the eventuality with sunglasses, lawn chairs, and a bottle of the best single-malt Scotch, and move on to things more amenable to control or mitigation.
You can also condense your list by merging threats that are very similar in likelihood, consequences, and preparedness options. An example might be short term or local power outages, which could have many different causes – storms, minor solar flares, cyber warfare, sabotage or terrorism. What they look like to you in each case and the measures you can take to mitigate their effects are pretty much the same.
This threat assessment exercise is worth saving, as it will have value in all your preparedness planning. It doesn't give you clear answers or guidance, because you still have to decide how to prioritize your inevitably limited time and resources. Whether you place greater emphasis on the more likely or the more dangerous scenarios is entirely a personal choice. Focusing, as many "preppers" do, on the worst-case catastrophic scenarios can be a trap, as it can eat up a lot of resources and still leave you poorly prepared for some far more likely but less dangerous events. On the other hand, there is the 99% rule, which suggests that if you prepare for the worst 1% of scenarios, you'll probably be in good shape for most of the other 99%.
Circling back toward the original purpose of this post, comb through your list for the threats that can be mitigated (to some degree at least) by "bugging out," or by keeping a "bugout bag" at arm's length. If, for instance, the kit you carry in your car on a regular basis provides you with food, clean water, warmth, and security for a few days, you and your loved ones will have at least a reasonable start in a wide range of situations, from sliding off the highway in a blizzard to a last-minute evacuation of your home in front of a raging wildfire or a raging mob. The mental exercise here is to look at your threat scenarios and identify how many could occur when you are away from home, or force you out of your home on very short notice, and make a quick checklist of must-have and nice-to-have things (with the attendant skills and knowledge, of course) in your trunk or toolbox.
WHEN?
A friend relates this story: in the process of remodeling his small city home, he created a lot of new storage space in the basement. His wife, who had never shared his interest in preparedness for unlikely events and had paid little attention to his project, walked through and exclaimed, "Honey, wow, look at all this shelving! We actually have enough space now to store some extra food besides what's in the pantry!"
My friend, with a skepticism born of experience, replied, "Really, Karen? How much food do you think we should store?" She said, "Well, I'm thinking maybe another 4 or 5 days' worth."
"Who are you kidding? Why even bother, if that's as far as you'll go?" he replied.
Her answer quickly had him wondering who this woman really was, and what she'd done with his wife: "Well, I figure if any of that serious stuff your crazy friends talk about ever happened, we couldn't stay here any longer than that. We live in the middle of a city in a semi-arid environment that gets all its water out of deep wells. If the power's off, as soon as the stores are empty and the swimming pools are drained, it's going to be murderous chaos, and we don't want to be here. We don't have room in both our cars to carry more than a few days' food plus all the rest of your necessary stuff, plus the kids, so why have more that we'd just have to abandon? Your next job is to figure out where the hell we'd be headed, and how we're going to see the trouble coming in advance so we can hit the road a day or two before the next half million people get the same idea."
That's not a bad analysis at all, but it's also an example of that fixation on the worst-case that we addressed above. A more systematic assessment of threats would probably identify several less dangerous but more likely scenarios, where the ability to hunker down for a time without having to compete for scarce supplies could be a reasonable option. One or several months' worth of food and essentials might have value in such circumstances.
That story raises, among several other interesting considerations, the key question of WHEN you would make the decision to bug out. If you live in an area where you could not assure your safety and security in a given threat scenario, chances are you share that situation with a whole lot of other folks. Some of them are thinking about it now; others will undergo a crash course in survival planning when things start to go bad. If you think that "getting out of Dodge" is going to be easy when tens or hundreds of thousands of others are fighting for road space, you haven't watched videos of large-scale evacuation in advance of a hurricane. What is your "early warning system"? Do you (and the rest of your family) have the moral courage to say, "Hey, I know it's short notice, but we're going to take a week or two off from work and school, and head out to Grandma's. Grab your go-bag and be ready in thirty minutes."
We've mentioned wildfires before. There are a whole lot of Californians, Oregonians, and Washingtonians who have, in the last two years especially, faced the sudden necessity of evacuating their homes and leaving behind everything they can't carry in their cars, on very short notice and with no assurance that anything left behind will be there when they are able to return. If you live in an area prone to wildfires – or to tsunamis, like the entire northwestern coast in the Cascadia Subduction Zone – or near the coast in the Southeastern quadrant of the U.S. where hurricanes are a part of life – bugging out presents a particular twist on the question of timing. How many of your essential, irreplaceable possessions and survival necessities can you roll with, on a day's notice? An hour? Twenty minutes?
WHERE FROM, and WHERE TO?
We've touched on geography – where you live, how survivable the area is under various conditions, and where you could find reasonable short-term or long-term refuge if you were to leave. These answers will be different across the spectrum of threats.
Even in some of the more densely-populated regions of America, in some circumstances you might be safer staying put, in a community you know, than fleeing into what could rapidly become a dangerous unknown. Staying home or consolidating with family or friends in your area, to pool resources and abilities, may be the best course of action. If the people around you are known quantities – friends or at least acquaintances, even if you haven't put much effort into building a sense of community and helping them prepare their own homes and families for off-normal contingencies – they may be a better bet than the increasingly desperate and disoriented "road people" you would encounter "over the hills and far away."
Fernando Aguirre ("Ferfal"), wrote about his experience as a young adult during the economic collapse in Argentina in 2001, the most recent example of a crisis of that magnitude in what was a first-world country at that time. His family hunkered down in their gated suburban neighborhood outside of Buenos Aires, with a modest level of pre-crisis preparations, and weathered the storm. Others who abandoned their homes for well-stocked "retreats" in the mountains did not fare so well, a grim story he relates in his book, The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse.
"Hardening up" and staying put in a sustainable community is probably a viable alternative for 80% of the population of a state like Wyoming – the primary audience of this website. But even this will require a shift in focus, on how you interact with your neighbors and in your community, starting yesterday.
However, if like my friends in the story above, you face a critical vulnerability like nonavailability of water, you should at least have a plan for where you are going to go. Unless you fancy the life of a modern-day mountain man, and are truly capable of living that life, it's not going to be up a foot trail into the mountains. It's not going to be an RV campground in the nearest National Forest. It's not going to be a small rural community that looks good on a map recon or a weekend road trip, where you are not known, in a crisis where communities like that will pull together to take care of themselves, and their welcome for, and ability to accommodate a flood of urban refugees may be short-lived.
If you can realistically expect to reach it in a crisis, rural property that you own in or near a community like that can be an answer. How to select and stock such a retreat – in a low-profile and secure manner such that your stuff and your vacant second home will still be there for you on arrival – is another problem to solve. Just as important, how will you integrate yourself into that community now, as a non-resident, so that you will be accepted on arrival? These questions are at least as important as the readiness of your vehicle(s) and the comprehensiveness of your bugout bags.
The risks and uncertainties – not to mention the expense – of maintaining a remote property as a destination can be much easier to address if you have trusted relatives or friends already ensconced in such a community, and a standing invitation to join them. What you must address in this case is how to ensure that you will be an asset and not a liability when you make it through the roadblock on the outskirts of town and up to Aunt Sally's house. Your bug-out pack is probably not going to buy more than a few nights' lodging before the welcome wears thin, or the increased demand on their own supplies and preparations puts everyone at risk.
HOW LONG?
When you were labeling and describing your threats, you included an estimate of how long the effects of each threat would persist, right? Of course, that's a trick question, because who can know how one threat situation may open the door to another, and how they will compound on another? For instance, any scenario that involves severe or long-term scarcity of vital goods and services will lead to some degree of societal breakdown and disorder in communities that lack high levels of cohesion and social trust. If you live in such a community, bugging out before things reach that stage would be a wise course of action. In a more stable and cohesive community, even under significant stress you may be better off staying and pitching in than heading out to or through areas where you cannot depend on the tolerance, charity or good will of others. As another example, that Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and tsunami in the U.S. northwest, when it occurs, will leave some communities without electricity or road access for months at least – according to emergency managers in the state of Oregon.
For a look at how what Clausewitz called the "friction" of war can turn apparently short, tame problems into extended, wicked ones, let's go back to the wildfire scenario. You live in the wildland/urban interface, and a fast-moving wildfire forces you from your home under a mandatory evacuation order after at most a few hours' warning to prepare. The fire burns through or past your neighborhood within an hour of your departure, and if your house is intact or lightly damaged, you might hope to get back within 24 hours of your departure. A day's worth of clothing, medications, toiletries and other essentials looked like all you would need for a night at a motel or in cots on a gymnasium floor, because of course the government would be there to provide food, water, and medical care, and tell you where to go and what to do. Right? Unless, that is, government resources are stretched to the breaking point by sustained operations across widespread simultaneous fires, or this fire's run through your neighborhood was patchy and left the hazard of a re-burn, or the authorities are keeping everyone out of the area to inhibit looting or because of the health hazards of the lingering blanket of smoke. Or you are released to return, but your car is out of gas because you had only a quarter tank when you left and the ongoing nationwide fuel shortage plus prioritization of available supplies for firefighters and first responders means you can't buy gas anywhere. You didn't bring enough cash, and your credit card has hit its limit.
If that does not resonate because wildfires are not a threat in your area, plug in your choice of a natural disaster that is more likely: Class 4 hurricane, F5 tornado, tsunami, paralyzing ice storm, earthquake, flood, or a regional electric grid failure. For an exercise in framing truly wicked problems, shuffle those into a deck with ideological or race-based civil disorder, a limited war with China, WMD or distributed terrorism, cyber warfare that crashes internet communications and the financial sector, even something as wildly improbable as a traffic jam of container ships full of essential products off the West Coast that cannot be unloaded due to environmental regulations and shortages of trucks and truck drivers (crazy idea, that). Then, since bad things tend to come in threes, draw any three cards, add that compounded threat scenario to your list, and ask yourself again where you have to go under those circumstances, whether you can get there through the "madding crowd", how long you need to be prepared to stay, and what preparations and coordination you need to have in place before any of these pots begin to boil over.
WHAT ARE OUR PERSONAL LIMITATIONS?
Some of us started breaking through the self-imposed barriers of "normalcy bias" and considering these decidedly "off-normal" scenarios when we were in the peak of health and fitness, carefree and single, somewhere between our mid-twenties and mid-thirties. We were long-distance runners, backpackers, hunters, bicyclers, and gym rats. Some of us are veterans who through the haze of remembrance "with advantages" know how far we rucked with 80 pounds on our backs. . . when we were 19 years old. That first 60-pound bugout pack crammed with all the essentials of wilderness survival didn't seem all that heavy when we hoisted it off the shelf of the garage.
Now we're twenty or thirty years older, paying the price for all the neglected minor injuries of our more active years, with worn-out joints, emerging cardiovascular issues, and spouses who, like ourselves, are too busy with their own jobs, a college tuition or two to pay for, shared child-rearing and home maintenance to have much time for workouts and outdoor sports. We're proud of twenty minutes on the treadmill on days when we can spare the time. Or we're a little younger, and the kids are younger too, with very limited experience and interest in outdoor sports, hiking, foraging, orienteering, and camping if it doesn't include video games and social media every night in your RV in a campground with power, water, and sewage hookups.
We had another friend who proudly shared with us the detailed two-page menu of bugout bag contents that he developed for a small circle of friends who had turned to him for this sort of advice. He had the "grab and go" version for the back-seat floorboard, and the real deal: the state-of-the-art internal frame backpack combat-loaded with ingenious lightweight tools, shelter, and seasonally adjusted "snivel gear," not to mention weapons, ammunition, handheld multiband radio with GPS, flashlights, batteries for everything. . . and a week's worth of food, so long as you're ready to "tighten your belt" and get by with minimal caloric intake as you abandon your home and car and trek into the wilderness with 60-70 pounds on your back. We inquired as to who was in his group, and he named several that were, despite impressive backgrounds, skills, and knowledge base, like the man himself, a little over the hill. We asked, "Do you really think that any of those individuals (not to mention their spouses, children, Grandma, and diabetic cousin Bob) could carry those packs 100 yards over broken ground from where they had to abandon their vehicle in the ditch with an empty gas tank and a million square miles of wintry mountain forest on the far horizon? If they're tied to their vehicle for mobility, don't they need a somewhat different loadout, a different set of tools and skills, a well-developed travel plan, comprehensive and current route intelligence. . . or maybe just a better-situated, more secure and sustainable home?"
There is certainly a place for bugout bags, from pocket size to pack-animal to vehicle size, and a whole host of scenarios where they will provide vital support for you and/or your family in a wide range of crises. A safe refuge within reach, and the moral courage and resolution to head that way in time, can be a close second to living in a community that can weather the storm. Just don't expect more of any of these solutions than they can really provide. Like an everyday concealed-carry handgun, they are not magical talismans that will protect you from harm simply by their presence.